Chapter Two
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Ily
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“COME ON, Il, JUST ONE more drink.”
I looked at the sparkling disco ball above and said a silent prayer to whoever would listen.
Please give me the strength not to break up with him.
Not tonight. Tonight is his birthday. He’s a spoiled little birthday boy who smudged my carefully applied makeup with a blowjob.
A blowjob I wasn’t all that keen on giving him, by the way—
“Are you listening to me?” Sam waved his hand in front of my face. “Helllllooo. Dammit, Ily, you’ve got that spaced-out look in your eyes again.”
Was it my fault that I found my own thoughts more entertaining these days?
How had we ended up like this?
Four years together and every day became more and more of a struggle. I’d had such high hopes that Paris would rekindle whatever spark we had. But alas...I spent my final meagre pounds on a dream.
“Jesus, woman. You gonna blink at me like a drunken owl all night or open your mouth and say something?”
I snapped out of my thoughts, smacking my coral-painted lips together. “My mouth was plenty open back at the hotel. So open, in fact, you were able to put something inside it if I recall.”
He sighed heavily, just like I knew he would. “It’s my birthday. A blowjob is tradition.”
“Not our tradition.”
“Every year, you’ve given me one.”
“By choice, Sam, not by force.”
“Force?” His eyebrows shot up. The reddish-brown mop on his head glistened from the product he’d used to tame it off his high forehead. His green eyes glittered with anger. “I have never forced you. Not once.”
“I said I was feeling queasy. That the pastrami from lunch wasn’t sitting right. Yet you moaned and groaned and guilt-tripped me so badly that it was easier to drop to my knees and say ‘ah!’ rather than keep arguing.”
The anger in his eyes deepened. “You and I both know that your excuses when it comes to sex are getting more and more common.” His voice rose a few octaves, supposedly imitating me.
“Oh, not tonight, Sam, I’ve started my period.
Oh sorry, didn’t I tell you? I agreed to go out with Alicia tonight. Oh shit, I have to work late—”
“Working late is a legitimate reason to refuse—”
“Ever since you got that promotion, you’ve made it almost impossible for me to spread your legs.” He pouted and crossed his arms. He looked like a petulant brat instead of a twenty-five-year-old pharmaceutical sales rep.
I honestly couldn’t remember why I once believed I was in love with him.
Once upon a time, I found his pale skin, faint freckles, and cultured upbringing a turn-on.
When he’d walked into the Tower of London gift shop with his then girlfriend (a mousy girl who cringed from the meat-eating crows), I couldn’t take my eyes off him.
Seemed the feeling was mutual because he’d come back the next day and the next, which didn’t make any sense because he lived in London and had been force-fed England’s morbid medieval history since the crib.
Turned out, I was the special attraction.
For a while, he’d been sweet and mostly doting but the past year, he’d hardened and turned a little cruel. His gaslighting had also gotten terribly out of control.
“I’m proud of that promotion.” My chin tipped up like it always did when I got snippy. “It took years for them to notice me.”
“You’re a glorified office manager.”
I didn’t bother telling him how hard I worked for more responsibility.
How most positions within the heavily fortified fortress were only given to the beefeaters and their kin.
What I really wanted to do was work with the priceless crown jewels, but only three people in the entire world were allowed to touch them.
Knowing I’d never put my gemmology qualification into use—unless I somehow became the queen—didn’t make my dreams any less real.
“Ah, I see where this is going,” Sam muttered, planting his hands on his hips like he always did when arguing with me.
He believed it made him look important. I believed it made him look like an arrogant ass.
“You’re still hanging on to the idea that one day you’ll be allowed to fondle their crowns and sceptres and whatever other diamond-encrusted baubles they have under lock and key. ”
“Can I help that I like pretty things?”
His nose wrinkled. I braced myself for another tirade, but he exhaled heavily and dropped his hands. “You’re a pretty thing. Can I help that I like you?”
I stiffened, but accepted the olive branch for what it was. “Thank you for the compliment.”
Smiling wider, doing his best to shed the tension between us, he slid his arms around my waist and pulled me closer.
We stood on the outskirts of the busy dance floor and the noisy racket classified as dance music blared far too loudly.
The fact that we’d been able to argue at all was a small miracle.
“I’ve always found you gorgeous. You know that.
” His hand skated up my side and played in the pin-straight, blue-black hair skimming my collarbones.
Sam definitely had Irish somewhere in his lineage, but—if I believed the fairytales my adoptive father whispered to me—then I was the half-blooded descendant of a maharajah.
According to him, somewhere, somehow, a king had corrupted a maiden and created my family line. If I hadn’t been dumped outside the local hospital where my father worked as a heart surgeon, I might never have existed past a few days old—bastard child of a long-ago maharajah or not.
Luckily, I now belonged to the best people in the world, and a pang of homesickness filled me.
We’d only been in Paris two nights, and I already wanted to leave.
I miss Krish. Wonder what he’s doing right now?
Damn, this was a mistake.
This relationship.
This holiday.
I...I’m done.
I’d been done for months, yet it’d taken all my savings and a foreign country to finally admit that.
Sam brought me closer, his lips puckering to kiss me. His eyes closed in preparation for making out in a raucous French nightclub.
I braced myself.
I went to kiss him back.
Only...in the time it took for our lips to meet, a surge of bravery washed through me. The strange courage was definitely ill-advised, but I couldn’t fight it anymore.
I couldn’t stop the urge to flee and be free.
“Sam.” I swayed back, refusing his kiss. “Sam...we need to talk.”
His eyes flew wide, the glittery disco ball dancing in his green gaze. “What?” He cocked his head against the music. “What did you say?”
Great.
I finally get the strength to break it off, and he can’t even hear me.
I could just pretend I hadn’t said anything.
Pretend I was happy.
Pretend I was fine.
But...I needed out.
Right here.
Right now.
Tonight.
Taking his hand, I tugged him away from the writhing dance floor. If I was going to do this, we both needed a drink.
His fingers latched around mine as he followed me.
We weaved around a sea of dancing, happy people, ducked around a few bouncers, then reached the crowded bar.
Taking a gulp of air no longer tainted by smelly sweat, overpowering men’s cologne, and overly sweet perfume, I tried to get the barkeep’s attention.
“Hi!” I waved my hand as Sam plastered himself against me.
“Hey, over here.” I waved harder, desperate for something to bolster my rapidly flagging courage.
“Getting in the mood, huh? I like it.” Sam’s hand slid down my ass, going far too deep and low. I flinched as his fingers probed between my legs, digging my flouncy rose gold skirt into my unmentionables.
My entire body jerked, not with passion or familiarity but with dreadfully building disgust.
Shifting my hips and doing my best to dislodge his fingers, I threw him a scowl. My lips parted to command he stop pawing me—
But...
Something farther along the bar.
Someone.
Someone who stopped my heart and made the awful music screech to silence in my ears.
Oh, dear lord in fanciful heaven.
Who.
The.
Hell.
Is.
That?
My gaze completely bypassed Sam and zeroed in on a demigod.
The man had to be descended from gods because no one, I meant no one, looked as impossibly perfect as he did.
Dark hair cropped close to his head. Lips a shade too red that only seemed to paint him with violence instead of seduction. Shadowed dark eyes and an impeccably shaven jaw. Cheeks that were slightly hollow and a throat clenching with power.
His lips thinned as he rolled them together, nodding at something his companion said.
His nose flared slightly as if he felt the same snap of awareness I did but couldn’t understand why.
Slowly, his head tipped up.
His gaze scanned the pumping club, his entire body full of predatory calculation.
My tummy fluttered.
His tongue flicked out and ran over his bottom lip, searching.
Look over here.
I couldn’t catch a proper breath.
I wanted him to see me. Just like I saw him. I wanted to know if he felt the same unexplainable flash of incinerating heat. A heat I’d never felt before, even in the hottest moment of passion.
His shoulders tensed as he kept looking.
My heart skipped twenty beats as it tried to remember how to work. My knees gave up being bone and became melted butter instead.
“What can I get you?” A woman leaned over the sticky bar and yelled in my ear.
All the music slammed back.
All the chaos and smells and...ill-advised courage.
Tearing my gaze from the demigod as he returned to glowering at the man beside him, I locked eyes with the pretty bartender and yelled far too loudly, “I’m breaking up with my boyfriend, and we need shots.”
Sam went rigid beside me.
The girl’s brown eyebrows shot to her pixie haircut.
And I swayed on the spot as the demigod suddenly looked past his companion and locked gazes with me.
Grey.
His eyes are dark grey.
He froze like I had.
Froze as if he smelled me from there and decided in a single moment that he very much wanted to eat me alive.
I didn’t know if I wanted to run away as fast as possible or offer myself up on a silver platter.
“What the fuck is going on, Ily?” Sam’s fingers dug into my upper arms, spinning me to face him. My nape prickled, hating that I couldn’t see the man who made my instincts sing with deep, dark warnings.
“You’re breaking up with me?” His face contorted into something scary instead of English charm. “What. The. Fuck?”
The bartender placed a long wooden board next to us with six shots of amber liquor. I looked from Sam’s rage to the shot.
I made the choice to administer some liquid courage.
Snatching two glasses, I tossed them back, winced at the fire, gasped, choked, coughed, coughed some more, then sucked in a wheezy breath.
“I know it’s your birthday, Sam, but...I’ve given you a blowjob, so I think it’s only fair that you give me a divorce.”